Hello Patrick/Precel,
Iliac Bay would certainly be interested in your skills. Both Hammerfell and High Rock have need of both new models and animations, particularly for new creatures. You can send a PM to Deeza, Joseph Crowell, or myself if you're interested in joining the project, and we'll get you set up.
-Sage of Ice, IB Co-Lead

Hey TheMooseman,
The Iliac Bay project would be very interested in your talents, particularly sound design, if you're interested. You can contact Deeza, Joseph Crowell, or myself if you would like to apply to the IB project so we can get you added.

Remember that many of the city names in other provinces are "Imperialized" versions of the names, or are directly founded by Imperials or Cyrodilic-speaking colonists, such as Southpoint in Valenwood. If you're referring to Blackrose, the same case happened there - though it was originally founded by the Lilmothiit, the current iteration of the city was essentially founded by Imperials. And yes, trying to find a balance between the logical realism of diversity in High Rock and Bethesda's official lore is important to us.

Essentially what we've done is taken the whole parcel into consideration, which is what ESO also did (to some extent), in that we're taking every game's conventions into account, as well as doing some expansion of our own. For us, the Bretons' names are "roughly regional," by which I mean that we've created areas where some types of names appear more often than others, but there's still a baseline of the typical French-sounding names throughout. This was done to try to stay in line with that lore you mentioned about the names being "fairly uniform," but note the use of the word "fairly" - that leaves open quite a bit of room to improvise within. It's also a good way to illustrate the fractious nature of the province. Also note that we try to follow TES3's example in making some Breton names unique, at least to some extent, rather than simply borrowing real-world names wholesale every time. Usually this involves taking individual name elements and slightly altering them, or combining them in ways not considered "traditional" by real-world standards. This is what you noticed in TES3 regarding the "made up" names. The same technique is used for other human races in TES as well, especially the Nords and Imperials. In short, the regions are as follows: Camlorn and the surrounding area primarily use English-sounding names, by which I mean post-1066 names, in addition to the TES1/TES2 style names. There's also a bit of Welsh from the neighboring Kambrian Highlands region.Wayrest and much of the northern Iliac Coast uses French and real-world Breton, the same type of names used so prolifically in TES3. Our reasoning is that not only are the "French" Breton names the most "modern" in terms of the development of the Bretic language, Bretons from these regions are most likely to be entrepreneurs who travel to other provinces - hence the heavy saturation of these Bretons in TES3 and TES4.Kambria and the insular Kambrian Highlands region primarily use Welsh names, almost exclusively. This region is a parallel to Wayrest in a sense - Old Bretic is still spoken here (though not commonly) and the traditional older Breton names are still in use, and we've designed Old Bretic to reference Welsh. This is due to the nature of Aldmeris' development by Bethesda, which very lightly borrows some Welsh elements (but not nearly as much as our Old Bretic does) owing to its basis in Tolkien's Sindarin language, and Old Bretic needed to have logically developed from both Aldmeris and Nedic.Daggerfall's kingdom is a blend of these first three groups. Its position in the province borders all three of those regions, and the much higher volume of trade, travel, and other kinds of movement in western High Rock guarantees Bretons from many regions eventually spend some time here, or settle.Shornhelm is similar to Wayrest and Daggerfall, but also has a Germanic/Eastern European flavor to the local names, owing to its heavy ties with Cyrodiil.Northpoint uses Scottish-sounding names. Like the Kambrian Highlands, Northpoint is an insular region where Old Bretic is still spoken, but with a different history owing to a unique relationship with the Direnni Altmer and a larger remnant Nedic character to their culture, though inconsistently realized. Rather than using Brythonic elements, we've gone with Goidelic instead.Evermore's region has an emphasis on Irish names, primarily owing to most of it containing High Rock's portion of the Reach, and with many Reachmen having lived in and around Evermore since before its founding. These specifically Irish-sounding names are what you picked up on with TES5's Reachmen, and is why we decided to carry over the influence here as well. If you look at the Reachmen names in TES5, you'll find they're primarily Irish in origin, rather than simply Celtic in general (e.g. no Brythonic/Welsh).Both Farrun and Jehanna make use of older Anglo-Saxon names, i.e. names common in England before the 1066 influx of Norman-French. This is our way of handling this blending region between High Rock and Skyrim, as this area undoubtedly will display greater influences from Nordic culture than other regions.The main thing to remember here, however, is that these aren't hard-and-fast rules. Just because a particular region is going to be characterized by a particular real-world source doesn't mean those names will only appear there, or won't appear in other places. But neither were we willing to take the TES3 route and use solely French names with the same amount of syllables in every name. That worked for a game with a small Breton population, but that kind of repetitiveness wouldn't work well for us. ESO did something similar to what we're doing - in fact, it used Welsh names for Bretons more than I thought it would - but we're hoping to improve on that.

Your work is beautiful! We would also love to have you join us on the Iliac Bay project (High Rock and Hammerfell). Your art style in particular would work extremely well with High Rock, which borrows quite heavily from Celtic-inspired styles, and concept art for new creatures, items/artifacts, knotwork patterns, and even important NPCs is something we're definitely looking to have help with. You can PM me, our 2D department lead TheMightyNovac, or our team leads Deeza and Meliodas if you're interested.

I should note perhaps that while every town isn't going to have a cathedral as such (only major cities will), we will have at least a chapel in every village, and a church in every town. This is to emphasize the fragmented nature of the province, since before the Warp in the West, every individual city-state had its own regional church and associated clergy/guild, like the Schools of Julianos or the Maran Knights. These factions will again be present in our version of High Rock, although they will most likely not be joinable factions as such and will instead serve to flesh out the province's depth instead. In the current age, although each of the eight kingdoms has its own patron deity (e.g. Camlorn's is Kynareth) and their state churches are structured around that patron accordingly, the smaller city-states within those kingdoms, especially those that used to be independent before the Warp, still maintain their own regional churches, and these retain their original pre-Warp patron deities despite now being part of the larger kingdom's church system. The bias against conjuration and necromancy in the Fourth Era is a direct result of the Oblivion Crisis. High Rock was particularly hard hit during the Crisis, especially major cities like Daggerfall and Wayrest, because it was so easy for Mythic Dawn agents to infiltrate into their systems due to the Bretons' generally lax attitude towards the legality of certain branches of magic. Naturally this resulted in a massive backlash against not only conjuration and Daedric worship, but also similarly "distasteful" schools like necromancy, and this lead directly into what we've termed the Fourth Era Witch Hunts, where a massive febrile effort was conducted across most of the province in an attempt to purge High Rock of those influences. Those have since ended long ago, but the distrust remains, and even groups like the witch covens who were considered "marginally" legal in Breton society have lost a lot of respect and earned a great deal of suspicion from everyone else, especially in the western and southern kingdoms. This isn't true of all places - like Northpoint, whose people don't care what people in Daggerfall or Wayrest think - but it's prevalent enough in most of the province to warrant a general policy of distrust. This also means that the penalties for using those types of magic will vary between regions, so while in one kingdom it may just warrant a slap on the wrist, in another kingdom you'd immediately incur a very serious sentence/fine indeed. Also, as Dobyk has already mentioned, several places in High Rock still practice cremation, which used to be the original method of funeral rites in all of High Rock before the Altmer and Imperials imported the custom of burials. It's said that this was actually done on purpose in part precisely to make things much more difficult for necromancers lurking at the fringes of their society, so in those places that still practice it it's very hard for necromancers to work there.

We'd also be very interested in your skills over in Iliac Bay as well. Most of our first pass of landscaping is complete, but we definitely need people to help work on our second pass, which is where we try to bring all the different claims that have been worked on in the past up to the same standards and fix anything that needs attention. In fact, one major area in High Rock that needs attention is the Glenpoint/Tulune area, and Betony probably needs some touching up as well. They're nowhere near the scale of what you've done in your own mod I imagine, but it sounds like you're passionate about those areas. If you've got any experience in interior level design as well, we definitely need help in that department as well. If you're interested in IB, we'd be glad to have you.

If you're referring to the city of Orsinium, presumably they'll use heavy armor. However, Orsinium is in Hammerfell, so it's not exactly relevant to this thread. The old Orsinium that used to be in High Rock has been gone for nearly 200 years at this point.

We've actually had plans for something like this for a long time. As seen here, all the various knightly orders in the game will not only have a distinct set of plate mail, but will also have "surcoats" unique to their home kingdom or city-state. In addition, all "normal" guards for every kingdom will have their own surcoats as well, just not as fancy as the knight ones. Unfortunately due to how physics works in Skyrim's engine, we're limited somewhat in how much we can do, but we're doing the best we can.

The choice in the color of the whitewashed plaster isn't arbitrary - as said before, the contrast in the city isn't limited to just Breton architecture and (remnants of) Direnni architecture, but the colors as well, which is intentional in this case. The dark color of the stone is because Farrun's primary resources are slate, which used to shingle roofs all over the province, and the dark stone that naturally pervades the area, whereas the white plaster is meant to intentionally "brighten up" a city otherwise crushed beneath historical and paranormal reminders of the past and also helps make the contrast with the white docks less jarring. The white marble the Direnni used for their architecture was shipped from distant locations and is not naturally occurring in the region (having all those slaves to transport it for them helped), which is another reason why it stands out so much from the surrounding environment. This kind of architectural color contrast happens frequently in real-life as well, even when building materials are not limited, so it isn't entirely unusual. E: Also, these houses are used throughout a large area of eastern High Rock that doesn't use the same dark stone as Farrun does for its walls and castle, so we had to consider that as well when the houses were designed.

The walls are dark on purpose, yes. The idea is that Farrun is not only supposed to be a rather bleak and austere place, especially compared to other nearby cities, but is also supposed to be a city of contrasting architectural styles and colors. The reason the houses in particular might look jarring to you is because those are all lower or middle class houses, which use a lot of plaster for their walls but relatively little stonework (which you'll notice shares the same dark coloration as the castle and walls do). Upper class buildings and guildhalls that use more stone will share the same coloration and will help bridge the color contrast, at least for the houses, but those haven't been made yet. The dark stonework is built in a very old Breton style particular to the region (which we're saying is shared with Castle Volkihar just across the border), whereas the white marble structures are all that remains of the Direnni city known as Fal'Ruhn.